Hello and welcome, Travel Tribe! I’m so glad you’re here.
As you may know from poking around on the site, my name is Deborah. Together with my son Jonah (my co-CEO and heart), we started Tiny Global Footprints to share our world adventures and show how education through travel can be an integral part of any childhood, even for a working parent.
It can be tough at times, though seeing the world with our kids is possible. And the shared experiences and memories, not to mention everything they and we learn along the way about ourselves and each other? Those are priceless.
Now if you’re like me, I sometimes read about someone’s experiences and think “I’ll never be able to do that! I don’t have the time/money/experience/courage/skills/you name it!”
It can be easy to get discouraged before even starting, especially when seeing the smiling pictures in the highlight reel of someone else’s life. So for this first post, I wanted to start at the beginning of this journey…which was bumpy.
Burnout: Where Things Began
When Jonah was really little, he and I weren’t able to spend a lot of time together because of the long hours I spent at work, not to mention the time required for my graduate school program. I’d work all day and then take classes at night, just trying to keep up. Though I always felt like I was behind and not enough…never enough. Not enough at work, not enough at grad school, and definitely not enough as a mother.
I hoped and prayed that if I just worked a little harder, things would somehow get better but nothing seemed to help. And the harder I worked, the worse I felt until I began to burn out, the mental and emotional tax of “work harder” overwhelming.
I knew something had to change. Because if it didn’t? I didn’t know what would happen.
During all of this, our family values of love and care had stuck with me; I knew these were mission critical in my life and for my family. I wondered how I could fit them better — or differently — into my day-to-day schedule and make the important quality time with Jonah. He wasn’t going to be little forever.
Something Special About Travel?
In the chaos, I’d found a respite in travel — I loved seeing different places and it was a way to escape the hustle and bustle of everyday life with work, school, and other responsibilities. After his first trip abroad to the Dominican Republic when Jonah was 17 months old and then his next trip at 20 months (this time to Dubai and Eritrea for a family trip), I could see that Jonah loved to travel too.
Maybe I was onto something…could there be the potential for travel to be a chance to spend some special time together, perhaps helping to make up for any time we’d lost?
Well, I’ll give you a hint: travel hit the spot I’d been searching for, creating a space for Jonah and me to share new experiences, go adventuring, and learn about ourselves and the world together.
And so the family travel trend continued! Now at 7 years old, Jonah has been to 10 countries around the world and we make it a priority to visit one or two countries every year.
It’s amazing — there is nothing like the joy of a child exploring a new place, and the joy of being the one exploring it with him. And that’s where it all began.
In the upcoming posts, we’ll talk about our recent trips and past favorites. I can’t wait to share them with you and hope to inspire (and hear about!) your travel adventures.
Until next time! 💗
